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NEWS AND OPINION FOR GAYS, LESBIANS AND CIVILIZED STRAIGHTS
Eleventh Year Issue #230
February 5,1990
16,000 Copies Library of Congress ISSN #0890-7951 1624 Harmon Place #210 Minneapolis, MN 55403-1916 (612)338-1411
Gessen comments on her citizenship approval
moment. But then the court clerk directed us to stand up and recite the oath of allegiance�and I realized it was all over.
Then the judge began a speech, directed at all of us from Vietnam, Korea and the Soviet Union, about the American tradition of democracy, the Americans� tradition of apathy, and our duty to participate in the political process even as those for whom it is a birthright neglect to do so. To my surprise and embarrassment, I felt close to crying in front of the 381 people who would understand and about as many who probably wouldn�t.
After almost nine years in this country, I felt mature and healthily cynical. It had taken me a few years to feel secure enough to acknowledge that this country is not perfect. It was some time before I decided that Ayn Rand was wrong on many subjects besides homosexuality. It took even longer to stop equating political progress with the retardation of world communism. I could now bitch and protest with the rest of gay and' lesbian activists without feeling slightly traitorous.
But there was at least one bit of Ayn Rand-ism, described in some out-of-print book, that held meaning for me even after the age of 17. It seems that that other Jewish woman who fled the Soviet Union was standing on a New York street corner one day handing our political leaflets. Some passerby noted her accent and questioned her right to be proselytizing on an American street corner, to which Rand responded with something like this: �That�s right! I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, besides being bom here?��
So, standing in a high school auditorium listening to a federal judge give a speech that he probably repeats once a week, I felt fiercely proud to have chosen this country, whose institutions discriminate against members of my community, whose highest court rules that we have no right to privacy, and whose political leaders often exhibit the same kind of intolerance that I fled when I left the Soviet Union. I still cannot name a country where I would rather become a citizen.
At home I told my lover about my fruitless wait for a final opportunity to ask the INS why a lesbian was being sworn in as a citizen. �You could have said something when the judge said, �Speak now or forever hold your peace,� � she responded. It appears that in my anxious state I blanked out my opportunity.
So, nothing happened. Except that one person with few rights anywhere in the world�my official designation until the ceremony was �stateless�� issued a challenge, and a huge government institution did not even rise to defend decades of homophobic practice. As battles go, it was downright boring. But then again, perhaps most battles are not that exciting� which makes me wonder what this country would be like if only more Americans exercised their birthright to fight.
�Maria Masha Gessen Roxbury, MA
OPINION
Nothing happened. At least that�s what the newspaper reporter said, when I called to tell her about the approval of my application for U.S. citizenship. What she meant is that nothing out of the ordinary happened:
I applied for naturalization and, like any other legal refugee who has lived in this country long enough and can demonstrate proficiency in U.S. history and the English language, 1 was granted citizenship�despite my insistence on mentioning at every juncture that I am a lesbian.
The reporter was right. The sequence of events briefly known as my test case would make for a terrible news article: a drawn-out, tedious beginning, a short and shallow middle part and a completely predictable ending. No tension whatsoever. A bore.
It all began in December of 1978�precisely 11 years, or half of my life, ago�when my father took our application for an exit visa to the Office of Visas and International Travel in Moscow. A trying two and a half years later my mother, my father, my six-year-old brother, Konstantin, and I landed at Boston�s Logan Airport. Over the next five years, my brother changed his name to Keith, I tried in vain to keep everyone from calling me Marsha, and all four of us accumulated enough residence time to become eligible for U.S. citizenship.
My parents and my brother applied and were naturalized, and my mother and father registered to vote as Republicans, like everyone else who lived in the neighborhood into which my father�s by then six-figure income had taken them. I stalled, because I am a procrastinator and because for four years already I had been quite publicly out as a lesbian�which most likely made me a person of insufficiently good moral character in the eyes of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Over the next two and a half years, I updated my application for naturalization three times�each time filing the completed form in my desk drawer�wrote half a dozen articles about the immigration laws pertaining to gays and lesbians, and continuously performed a mental risk-benefit analysis of applying for naturalization as an open lesbian. In August of 1988 I finally called a gay immigration lawyer and told him I wanted to challenge the INS policy of discriminating against homosexuals.
I felt breathtakingly liberated, like I had felt the day we received the exit visa. I knew it wouldn�t be easy, but I actually looked forward to the hurdles of the next five or eight years: the hearings, the appeals, the fund raising to cover the astronomical legal fees, the demonstrations in front of the INS and the Supreme Court, the endless phone calls from reporters, the fame, the glory... even my new lawyer seemed excited, in a lawyerly sort of way.
We filed my papers with some fanfare in February. My application contained at least three instances of the words gay and lesbian, and a special cover letter declared war.
An uneventful ten months later, I received an invitation to appear in the cafeteria of Boston Latin High School for the swearing-in ceremony. Despite my attorney�s insistence that she would be breaking INS policy, the INS official who interviewed me had approved my application. And the agency processed my papers about four months ahead of schedule.
The morning of the ceremony I was filled with dread. Joking with my lover about the possibility that the INS notice was a trap, and that I would be put on a plane to Moscow instead of getting sworn in, I suddenly developed an uncomfortably heightened awareness of my surroundings and the ease with which my condominium-owning, Levi�s-wearing, Japanese-car-driving, two-kinds-of-computers-using lifestyle could be destroyed. I was suddenly conscious not only of being in the shower with my female lover, but of all tb
improbability of such a setting in the country where i grew up.
With my right hand raised as though I were taking an oath, I modeled several outfits in front of the mirror. I checked the amount of cash in my pocket and mentally assessed its buying power in Moscow. On some not-so-deep level, the possibility of being sent back to the Soviet Union seemed no more unrealistic than the possibility of becoming an American citizen.
The flag was the first thing I saw when we entered the oldest high school in the country (founded in 1635, a year before Harvard University). Suspended behind a glass plate, it was tattered and had a dark gold fringe. I wondered if I had seen fringed flags before but not noticed them.
There were already several hundred people in the school cafeteria, most of them still wearing their coats, jammed together on uncomfortable benches Ellis Island-style. I sat down on a nearly empty bench, but was immediately joined by people on both sides. A woman and her teenage son sat down to my right, speaking to each other in English. The woman�s accent identified her as a Soviet-born. A young man squeezed in to my left. He was wearing a tiny gold hoop in his left ear and was laughing and flailing his hands the way so many of my acquaintances do. I laughed at myself for thinking that here, of all places, I would be the only one.
To my surprise, everyone around me was speaking in English, joking and discoursing with ease. I realized that I had expected a bunch of immigrants; instead I was confronted with Americans a lot like me. A number of people were wearing American-flag buttons in their lapels. Mine was an American flag with a pink triangle.
Three hours later we were finally ushered into a beautiful old auditorium where the walls were decorated with the names of the high school�s famous alumni�Adams, Emerson, Kennedy. My lover and I sat down in the front row just as INS officials were placing a flag on the stage�a grand new one with a shiny gold fringe. �What a hideous flag,� said my lover.
As the judge began speaking I wondered if I would be allowed a final moment of truth�some sort of a �speak now or forever hold your peace� opportunity�when I could get up in front of the 381 applicants and as many guests and declare that I was still a lesbian. I began to sweat as I imagined the
Loleatta Holloway at Gay �90s Valentines Day
Loleatta Holloway, one of the hottest new recording artists of the �80s, will be doing a track show at the Gay �90s in the Dance Annex on Valentines Day, February 14. There is no cover, and capacity is limited by local ordinance, so arrive early. Ms. Holloway is best known for these recent releases: �Love Sensation,� �Relight My Fire,� and �Hit and Run.�

NEWS AND OPINION FOR GAYS, LESBIANS AND CIVILIZED STRAIGHTS
Eleventh Year Issue #230
February 5,1990
16,000 Copies Library of Congress ISSN #0890-7951 1624 Harmon Place #210 Minneapolis, MN 55403-1916 (612)338-1411
Gessen comments on her citizenship approval
moment. But then the court clerk directed us to stand up and recite the oath of allegiance�and I realized it was all over.
Then the judge began a speech, directed at all of us from Vietnam, Korea and the Soviet Union, about the American tradition of democracy, the Americans� tradition of apathy, and our duty to participate in the political process even as those for whom it is a birthright neglect to do so. To my surprise and embarrassment, I felt close to crying in front of the 381 people who would understand and about as many who probably wouldn�t.
After almost nine years in this country, I felt mature and healthily cynical. It had taken me a few years to feel secure enough to acknowledge that this country is not perfect. It was some time before I decided that Ayn Rand was wrong on many subjects besides homosexuality. It took even longer to stop equating political progress with the retardation of world communism. I could now bitch and protest with the rest of gay and' lesbian activists without feeling slightly traitorous.
But there was at least one bit of Ayn Rand-ism, described in some out-of-print book, that held meaning for me even after the age of 17. It seems that that other Jewish woman who fled the Soviet Union was standing on a New York street corner one day handing our political leaflets. Some passerby noted her accent and questioned her right to be proselytizing on an American street corner, to which Rand responded with something like this: �That�s right! I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, besides being bom here?��
So, standing in a high school auditorium listening to a federal judge give a speech that he probably repeats once a week, I felt fiercely proud to have chosen this country, whose institutions discriminate against members of my community, whose highest court rules that we have no right to privacy, and whose political leaders often exhibit the same kind of intolerance that I fled when I left the Soviet Union. I still cannot name a country where I would rather become a citizen.
At home I told my lover about my fruitless wait for a final opportunity to ask the INS why a lesbian was being sworn in as a citizen. �You could have said something when the judge said, �Speak now or forever hold your peace,� � she responded. It appears that in my anxious state I blanked out my opportunity.
So, nothing happened. Except that one person with few rights anywhere in the world�my official designation until the ceremony was �stateless�� issued a challenge, and a huge government institution did not even rise to defend decades of homophobic practice. As battles go, it was downright boring. But then again, perhaps most battles are not that exciting� which makes me wonder what this country would be like if only more Americans exercised their birthright to fight.
�Maria Masha Gessen Roxbury, MA
OPINION
Nothing happened. At least that�s what the newspaper reporter said, when I called to tell her about the approval of my application for U.S. citizenship. What she meant is that nothing out of the ordinary happened:
I applied for naturalization and, like any other legal refugee who has lived in this country long enough and can demonstrate proficiency in U.S. history and the English language, 1 was granted citizenship�despite my insistence on mentioning at every juncture that I am a lesbian.
The reporter was right. The sequence of events briefly known as my test case would make for a terrible news article: a drawn-out, tedious beginning, a short and shallow middle part and a completely predictable ending. No tension whatsoever. A bore.
It all began in December of 1978�precisely 11 years, or half of my life, ago�when my father took our application for an exit visa to the Office of Visas and International Travel in Moscow. A trying two and a half years later my mother, my father, my six-year-old brother, Konstantin, and I landed at Boston�s Logan Airport. Over the next five years, my brother changed his name to Keith, I tried in vain to keep everyone from calling me Marsha, and all four of us accumulated enough residence time to become eligible for U.S. citizenship.
My parents and my brother applied and were naturalized, and my mother and father registered to vote as Republicans, like everyone else who lived in the neighborhood into which my father�s by then six-figure income had taken them. I stalled, because I am a procrastinator and because for four years already I had been quite publicly out as a lesbian�which most likely made me a person of insufficiently good moral character in the eyes of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Over the next two and a half years, I updated my application for naturalization three times�each time filing the completed form in my desk drawer�wrote half a dozen articles about the immigration laws pertaining to gays and lesbians, and continuously performed a mental risk-benefit analysis of applying for naturalization as an open lesbian. In August of 1988 I finally called a gay immigration lawyer and told him I wanted to challenge the INS policy of discriminating against homosexuals.
I felt breathtakingly liberated, like I had felt the day we received the exit visa. I knew it wouldn�t be easy, but I actually looked forward to the hurdles of the next five or eight years: the hearings, the appeals, the fund raising to cover the astronomical legal fees, the demonstrations in front of the INS and the Supreme Court, the endless phone calls from reporters, the fame, the glory... even my new lawyer seemed excited, in a lawyerly sort of way.
We filed my papers with some fanfare in February. My application contained at least three instances of the words gay and lesbian, and a special cover letter declared war.
An uneventful ten months later, I received an invitation to appear in the cafeteria of Boston Latin High School for the swearing-in ceremony. Despite my attorney�s insistence that she would be breaking INS policy, the INS official who interviewed me had approved my application. And the agency processed my papers about four months ahead of schedule.
The morning of the ceremony I was filled with dread. Joking with my lover about the possibility that the INS notice was a trap, and that I would be put on a plane to Moscow instead of getting sworn in, I suddenly developed an uncomfortably heightened awareness of my surroundings and the ease with which my condominium-owning, Levi�s-wearing, Japanese-car-driving, two-kinds-of-computers-using lifestyle could be destroyed. I was suddenly conscious not only of being in the shower with my female lover, but of all tb
improbability of such a setting in the country where i grew up.
With my right hand raised as though I were taking an oath, I modeled several outfits in front of the mirror. I checked the amount of cash in my pocket and mentally assessed its buying power in Moscow. On some not-so-deep level, the possibility of being sent back to the Soviet Union seemed no more unrealistic than the possibility of becoming an American citizen.
The flag was the first thing I saw when we entered the oldest high school in the country (founded in 1635, a year before Harvard University). Suspended behind a glass plate, it was tattered and had a dark gold fringe. I wondered if I had seen fringed flags before but not noticed them.
There were already several hundred people in the school cafeteria, most of them still wearing their coats, jammed together on uncomfortable benches Ellis Island-style. I sat down on a nearly empty bench, but was immediately joined by people on both sides. A woman and her teenage son sat down to my right, speaking to each other in English. The woman�s accent identified her as a Soviet-born. A young man squeezed in to my left. He was wearing a tiny gold hoop in his left ear and was laughing and flailing his hands the way so many of my acquaintances do. I laughed at myself for thinking that here, of all places, I would be the only one.
To my surprise, everyone around me was speaking in English, joking and discoursing with ease. I realized that I had expected a bunch of immigrants; instead I was confronted with Americans a lot like me. A number of people were wearing American-flag buttons in their lapels. Mine was an American flag with a pink triangle.
Three hours later we were finally ushered into a beautiful old auditorium where the walls were decorated with the names of the high school�s famous alumni�Adams, Emerson, Kennedy. My lover and I sat down in the front row just as INS officials were placing a flag on the stage�a grand new one with a shiny gold fringe. �What a hideous flag,� said my lover.
As the judge began speaking I wondered if I would be allowed a final moment of truth�some sort of a �speak now or forever hold your peace� opportunity�when I could get up in front of the 381 applicants and as many guests and declare that I was still a lesbian. I began to sweat as I imagined the
Loleatta Holloway at Gay �90s Valentines Day
Loleatta Holloway, one of the hottest new recording artists of the �80s, will be doing a track show at the Gay �90s in the Dance Annex on Valentines Day, February 14. There is no cover, and capacity is limited by local ordinance, so arrive early. Ms. Holloway is best known for these recent releases: �Love Sensation,� �Relight My Fire,� and �Hit and Run.�